In the 1930s, he was the lover of the playwright Terence Rattigan and made his film debut in the movie version of Rattigan's first theatrical success, "French Without Tears". His relationship with Rattigan was a tortured one, especially as the latter was far more successful, and it was the indirect basis for a famous Rattigan play written after his suicide, "The Deep Blue Sea". The play. and its subsequent film versions, changes the relationship to a heterosexual one, and the truth was not made public until Rattigan's own death in the late 1970s.
